Ulster Unionist Labour Association - B Specials Established

B Specials Established

Catholic retaliation and reprisals were inevitable with gun and bomb attacks on trains carrying shipyard workers. This resulted in yet more reprisals with widespread looting and burning of Catholic owned businesses. The British army while guarding Catholic properties clashed with Protestant crowds with fatal consequences. This resulted in UULA creating an “unofficial special constabulary,” with members drawn chiefly from the shipyards, tasked with ‘policing’ Protestant areas. Carson and Craig need to establish a militant basis for resistance to republicanism wished to reconstitute the UVF’ which could operate independently of the British. They then set about securing British government approval and funds for the UULA constabularies in Belfast along with the UVF.

While Sir Neville Macready commander-in-chief of the British army in Ireland withheld his approval, he and his supporters in the Irish administration were overridden; Lloyd George’s approved from the beginning and granted official status in the form of the B Specials in November 1920. This official endorsement would shape both the formation of the state of Northern Ireland and Catholic feelings to it.